The emerging business model of today in the Internet appears to be “free”. When designing for example social media services, the easy access and the basic free model get the people in. Or at least it won’t scare them away so easily. Think about your actions, if you have an interesting site, service or product what happens to your interests when the tick mark of “Pay 9,95 € / month” appears?
What about research articles online? I was searching for some articles about heuristics in instructional design and technology and also found a couple of interesting ones. I won’t be reading them, as I won’t be paying for them.
I just wonder how many situations like this are out there, where a lot of good research gets forgotten and hidden away because of poor usability of the web sites that distribute them and because of stupid business models which prevent people of even skimming them through.
At the same time we get to read comments on how often articles get read merely by their journal reviewers and maybe the author’s mother. Unfortunate, maybe, but I guess with models like this, they are asking for it.
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